This invention relates generally to encryption systems and methods for authentication and access, and more particularly to encryption systems and methods for networks for remotely authorizing local access to digital content stored on content media.
Developers of digital information, for example multimedia information such as streaming video and/or audio information, or of other digital data or code, face a number of significant problems in delivering the digital content to end users and then controlling access to the digital content. Content owners and providers are interested in a distribution mechanism which allows them to efficiently and inexpensively produce and distribute the digital content to end users, while at the same time controlling access and preventing unauthorized copying and use of the digital content. Some content owners who mass produce and distribute content on physical media have relied upon obtaining the agreement of end users to licenses limiting use or copying before authorizing access to the content. While licenses may afford the content owner a legal remedy, they are not effective in preventing unauthorized activities. Once unprotected content has been publicly distributed, it is difficult to prevent unauthorized copying and use of the content. Even encrypted content which requires a key for use may be easily duplicated and used without authorization.
Instead of distributing physical media, some content owners rely upon electronic delivery of content over a network, such as the Internet. This provides a content owner somewhat greater control over the content, since the content owner can require actual identification of the end user and an agreement to license terms before downloading the content to the user. However, once a content is downloaded, the content owner loses the ability to control access to the content.
Controlling access to content may be desirable not only to prevent unauthorized distribution and use by others, but also, as in the case of training materials, to require the user to progress through the content in a controlled and predetermined manner. It may be desirable, for example, to require users to complete chapters in a preassigned order and to perform certain exercises after completing one chapter before going to the next. Although the content owner can regulate this through online delivery of the content, once a content has been delivered to the user, the problems of unauthorized copying and use continue to exist. Moreover, online delivery of broadband content has other problems which favors delivery of content in other forms. Streaming video, for example, may have quality problems due to network or system bandwidth limitations or be incompatible with corporate firewalls which, for security purposes, may block streaming content.
Loss of revenue is another significant problem faced by content owners because of their inability to effectively control access to content following distribution and their inability to monitor and charge for subsequent uses of their content. A training video, for example, has value each time it is used and the content owner has had no effective way of deriving revenue for each use of such content after it has been distributed. Even content delivered on line may be stored, copied and reused once it has been delivered to a user.
It is desirable to provide systems and methods which address these and other problems faced by owners of digital content in distributing and controlling each access to the content, and it is to these ends that the present invention is directed.